One of the reasons behind this trip to South East Asia was to got away from the Middle East for a little bit – As I am sitting in a frozen yogurt cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, I just realised that sometimes you just can’t escape very easily.

I just came out of an exhibit on the history of Vietnam’s communist party. I went because I figured you don’t get to see propaganda by a ruling communist party a lot these days. In the midst of various memorabilia (silver plate from the Libyan Jamahiryya, Cuban stamps, plate from Turkmenistan etc.), posters of all the communist party congresses, photos of party officials being received by various dignitaries and/or at the ceremony for Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN or the WTO, one document from the 1945 liberation struggle from the French really caught my attention. The pamphlet calls for an end to French aggression in exchange for protection of France’s commercial interests in the country. The second last paragraphs is very militant ‘Français! Réfléchissez! Vous avez appris aux événements de Syrie-Liban`. It reminded me of a different Syrian revolution that once was.

The next stop on the tour was the War Remnants Museum. The museum is an impressive and harrowing tour of the impact of the Vietnam war. It has a bright orange room full of pictures of victims of Napalm and other biological weapons, US army tanks and helicopters parked outside and a ‘requiem’ photo exhibition. The ground floor hosts a collection about the various protests that took place all over the world, including in Aleppo, Syria.

A lot of thoughts are now racing in my head on imperialism, military intervention, resistance and post-resistance propaganda (brought to you by the `historic truth` part of the museum). Perhaps the loudest one is a reflection on how humans take part in historic events, motivated in part by my non-heroic and passive experience with the Egyptian revolution. This quote has moved me more than anything else in the museum.

Someone may criticise me, a citizen of a third world country for self-burning in protest, but I strongly believe that those who long for the real peace in Vietnam and all over the world will not consider my death as being in vain